ZYMERON CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: CBD192-001

Description

Military Working Dogs (MWDs) provide a valuable asset to military troops, police, and other government agencies. In recent years, the increasing deployments of MWDs in different tactical environments make them encounter much higher risk from exposure to a range of hazardous chemicals, including chemical warfare agents (CWAs), toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), and narcotics. Since there is no protective equipment available for MWDs against hazardous chemicals, it is necessary to have an effective immediate decontamination system to eliminate the hazardous chemicals. To realize the immediate decontamination of MWDs, Zymeron purposes to develop a fully-functional kit system (K9-IDeK). Such immediate decontamination kit consists of an introduction unit, a detection unit, a decontamination unit and a canine vest. When exposed in fields, handlers could use detection unit to detect and ascertain hazardous chemicals rapidly, followed by using the vest-loaded decontamination materials to remove contaminants under the guidance in the introduction unit. Note that this K9-IDeK system could achieve the objective of over 90% reduction of contaminants without external resource (e.g. water supply).